


Slings and arrows

by redroslin



Series: The Laura Roslin soul mate AUs [6]
Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Arrow of Apollo, Cylon baby farms, F/F, First Kiss, Get Together, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining for your platonic soulmate, Redeeming Kara's blue dress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 13:22:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19085902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redroslin/pseuds/redroslin
Summary: The President was entirely out of Kara's league and there was no point in wondering, because they were platonic, and that was all there was to it.





	Slings and arrows

**Author's Note:**

> A few pieces of dialogue in this were taken from episodes 1.12 (Kobol's Last Gleaming, part 1) and 2.05 (The Farm), though frankly I kind of butchered the argument scene from KLG to avoid lifting an entire page of unaltered dialogue from canon, because nobody wants that.
> 
> Also I am SO SORRY for Baltar's existence.

_BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, 48 DAYS AFTER CYLON ATTACK ON THE TWELVE COLONIES_

_THE WEE HOURS OF THE MORNING AFTER COLONIAL DAY_

 

They stumbled through the hatch in a tangle of limbs and unhinged laughter, frantic for skin and not giving a frak who saw them.

Kara thought distantly that maybe she should give a frak--but that was _future_ Kara's problem, and _right-now-horny-as-frak_ Kara only cared about getting somewhere horizontal so that she could come as hard and as soon as humanly possible.

He sucked a bite into the bare skin of her shoulder and she groaned, desperate for more contact.

She couldn't have told you quite how she'd wound up here. She'd been assigned to the President's security detail on Cloud Nine until Laura headed back to Colonial One, and at some point there had been celebratory shots with Lee in their duty locker. Probably a few too many shots, truth be told. She had a blurry recollection of someone passing a flask in the midst of a triad game--was that before or after Hot Dog streaked through the mess?--and then--then--

Huh. Somehow she'd ended up here, still in the blasted dress she'd worn trying to impress Laura--to zero effect, of course, because Laura was made of stone and nothing ever got under her collar, no matter how desperately Kara wished she were capable of rattling her just a little. Just enough to maybe force her to reconsider her stance on that whole 'platonic' thing. (Damn her and her ungodly voice and incredible body and perfect smile. It wasn't fair.)

In any event, there had been the slinky blue dress, and the dancing (Laura had danced, and Kara had died a little inside and hated herself for hating the Old Man). And then there were shots and Lee and triad and everyone laughing at Hot Dog, and all of that had somehow led here: Kara stumbling backward through a hatch at some unholy hour of the morning with Gaius Baltar, who was even more drunk than Kara--and a surprisingly good kisser for a crazy man. And who seemed to be packing a not-unappealing body under his tailored suits, besides.

"Wait, stop," he said suddenly, in that ridiculous accent that no one could never take seriously. "The President--"

Frakking _hell_. She was going to murder him before he even stuck it in her. "What."

"Aren't you and the President--"

"We're platonic, holy frak, do you want me to suck your dick or not?"

"Yes, yes, of course."

They were platonic. They godsdamn were.

But Kara wanted her so badly.

Was she really going to frak _Gaius Baltar_ , of all people, just because she couldn't get her hands on Laura?

...Welp. Guess not.

"Just kidding," she said, disentangling herself and rising to her feet, tripping only a little on her hem. "I'm outta here."

"What?" Baltar asked, bewildered. Then, again, at twice the pitch, rising up on his elbows to glare at her: " _What?_ "

"See ya!" She shrugged the satin straps of the dress back into place and slipped out the hatch.

The godsmacked look on his face as she left was almost worth the entire humiliating mess that came next.

 

* * *

 

" _How is_ the Vice President, by the way?"

Fraksake, Lee. She didn't need his sanctimonious crap today. Or ever, frankly.

"I don't know," she said lightly, continuing to load ordinance into the Raider. "Haven't seen him."

Lee stared so hard she could feel it through the back of her head. "So he's a love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy, I guess."

Borrowing an ounce of Laura's poise, she told him, "I wouldn't know."

He leaned in skeptically. "You _wouldn't know_?"

"Nope."

"Just ships passing in the night."

Frak it, enough was enough. "You want something from me?"

"Not a thing." _Right._ Heaven forbid Lee Adama come clean about his motives for being an unmitigated ass.

She shrugged. "'Cause I don't owe you anything."

He narrowed his eyes. "No, you definitely don't owe _me_ a thing."

"And what's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Out of everyone in the fleet that you could have frakked, you had to pick _her Vice President_? Really, Kara?"

"I have no idea what you--"

"Were you _trying_ to hurt her?" he demanded.

"Maybe I am," she spat. "What's it to you?"

He unbent enough that she knew she'd hit soft tissue. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Little bit hot for teacher, Lee?"

"Frak you, Kara. I'm just trying to help you."

"Maybe _don't_."

She was ten feet away when he asked, "Why'd you do it, Kara? Just tell me why."

"'Cause I'm a screw up, Lee," she told him without looking back. "Try to keep that in mind."

 

* * *

 

She didn't mean to fixate, but the President was just so _much_ : all that force of personality in a desperately unassuming form. Kara knew what it was like to be drawn to power, to want to frak someone just because they were tougher or stronger or _better_ than you, but this took the cake. She'd never wanted anyone like she wanted Laura Roslin.

Laura Roslin, her _platonic_ soul mate. Frak damn it all to hell.

Laura had steamrolled over Kara's terrified objections and plunged them almost overnight into a friendship like nothing Kara had ever had before ("You've already saved my life at least twice that I'm aware of, so what do we have to be shy about?"). She could let down her guard around Laura, just a little, without feeling like the world was leaning in breathlessly, waiting for a chance to crush her. It was new, and strange, but most of all it was just so _good_.

Except. Well, except for how Laura was the most beautiful woman Kara had ever seen, with a face like an angel's, a voice like smoky Ambrosia, and an hourglass figure displayed to devastating effect in classic suits and heels (those heels, _damn_ ). Laura was painfully attractive, with the emphasis on _painful_.

She was entirely out of Kara's league and there was no point in wondering, because they were platonic, and that was all there was to it.

So when Laura said, "If you go back to Caprica and bring me the Arrow, it will show us the way," Kara didn't question it. She didn't think twice.

She took her soul mate's words to heart and she went.

 

* * *

 

She was sitting in the living room of her old rat trap apartment with Helo, covered in radioactive dust and hazy memories, when she felt the blows land.

The palms of her hands flared to life on impact, followed a fraction of a second later by the hard slap of--a bulkhead, maybe?--against her chest and face. An ache of whiplash in her neck, distant and fading. Ringing in her ears.

_Frak. Laura. No._

"What's wrong?" Helo asked sharply. "Kara?"

She scrambled for a pen, frantically; pulled back her sleeve and scribbled across her left wrist, sloppy and rushed, **_TELL ME YOU'RE OKAY._**

She had to be okay. She _had_ to be.

She was the godsdamn _President of the Twelve Colonies_ , she had a security detail, so what if they weren't as good at watching her back as Kara was--

But Kara wasn't there, and Laura had been hurt. Gods. Oh gods.

"Kara? Talk to me."

"I'm fine."

"Bullshit."

"It's nothing. I'm fine."

One of her palms started seeping blood from a jagged little scrape, and she swiped the trickle away with her other thumb.

Blood was good. If Laura was bleeding, that meant her heart was still pumping, which meant--

"You don't seem fine," Helo said.

"It's not me. It's my frakking soul mate."

"Your..." He sounded shocked. "Your soul mate survived the attacks?"

"'Course she did." And then she remembered who she was talking to. "Oh, frak me. You don't know."

"Know what?"

She shook her head. "It's the most ridiculous--my soul mate is President of the Twelve Colonies. Or she is now, since Adar died. She's the one who sent me back here for the Arrow."

"Your _what_."

"I know." She forced a smile. "Crazy, huh?"

"Yeah. Your soul mate. That's..."

"She's amazing."

"I bet." He grinned. "She nuts like you, too?"

"Nothing like me." She grinned. "You'll like her. Or you'll hate her. Everyone else does."

His forehead crinkled. "Likes her, or hates her?"

"One or the other. The Old Man can't decide which, from one day to the next. It's a ride."

"Sounds like." He shook his head. "Wait. If you've met her, why are you still--doesn't transference stop once you meet?"

Kara shrugged as if that very question hadn't plagued her for weeks, ever since Laura'd stubbed her toe on the leg of a chair and Kara, in her viper, almost flubbed a shot. "I guess not."

Helo gave her a piercing look. "You guess not?"

"Dunno what to tell you. My transference with Laura hasn't changed at all since we met."

"That's not normal."

"What's normal?" She gestured through the walls at the abandoned city around them. "This? Pretty sure normal left us all behind a few nukes ago."

"Frak," Helo said. "I can't argue with that."

He wasn't wrong, though, and Kara couldn't shrug it off as easily as she'd claimed. Her mind kept circling helplessly as they jostled over unpaved roads; wondering what was happening in the fleet, wondering if Laura was all right.

The scrape on Kara's palm had scabbed over, and the rest of her body felt bruised, which seemed promising. Laura was alive. She had to be.

Nothing Kara could do about it if she wasn't. All she could do was find a way to bring the Arrow to Laura, find a way off this planet.

A few hours later, stopped to check their maps, Kara tugged her sleeve back far enough to read, **_I'm all right. Come home to me safe._**

 ** _YES MA'AM_** , she just had time to reply before the shooting started.

 

* * *

 

Even once they joined up with the C-Bucs (of all the ridiculous coincidences) and started planning to steal a Cylon ship, Kara kept circling back to what Helo had said.

It wasn't _normal_. You weren't supposed to keep feeling each other's pain or be able to trace ink on each other's skin once you'd met and cemented your bond. But maybe it was different for platonic soul mates?

Maybe Kara was broken, and that was all there was to it.

 

* * *

 

Kara woke up in a hospital bed for the third time since the 'cyst' had been removed from her ovary, alone in the near-dark, fuzzy, drifting. The room was tilting, just a little, and she thought she could get lost in its spin--let it lull her back to sleep, let it ease her onto a safer path.

She looked down out of habit and saw the words ** _I love you_** lit up in black ink across her left wrist.

Oh.

 ** _(I love you_** **_I love you_** **_I love you I love you)_**

She rubbed her fingers against Laura's precise, school-teacher writing, and smiled.

She had an escape to plan.

 

* * *

 

Helo and the C-Bucs showed up in the nick of time to cover her escape from the Cylon hospital (former insane asylum, current breeding farm, prison, torture chamber, _how the frak dare they_ ). She couldn't shake the faces of the women hooked up to the breeding machines, the sound of Sue-Shaun's voice as she begged Kara to end it.

How much did they have to endure? And how could any of this be worth it?

She was still reeling when the Cylon wearing Sharon's face interrupted her thoughts.

"They know who you are, Kara," Sharon's clone said warily. "You're special. Leoben told you that. You have a destiny."

Frakking Cylons. Always with the murder and bluster and godsdamn _destiny_.

Destiny could hang.

"My _destiny_ is back in the fleet waiting for me to bring her the Arrow. The rest of whatever you're talking about can frak off and die, for all I care. Get out of my way."

 

* * *

 

She was _tired_. Bone tired and heartsore, running on fumes and bearing a new mystery scar that she guessed she'd have to explain to Laura at some point. But she was alive, she had the Arrow, and she was home.

She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep herself upright, but it would be long enough to get where she needed to be.

Home. To Laura.

The walk from the heavy raider felt like it took an eon: down the twisted hallway from the transport's antique coupling bay, around another blind corner, one foot in front of the other, just a few more steps and then she could rest, right? Almost there.

 And then there was Lee. And, behind him, Laura.

And Lee was opening his arms, and she was falling into them, and, gods. Lee.

"Hi," she said, pulling back to look Laura in the eyes over his shoulder. It felt like she was seeing her for the first time. "You're a sight for sore eyes."

"Kara," Laura said, softly, as if they were the only two people in the room. In the galaxy.

Kara let go of Lee and tumbled toward her like a satellite in decaying orbit; tripping faster with each step until she all but collided with Laura's gorgeous and very real self.

"Gods, I was worried about you," Kara told her.

"Darling," Laura said with a wry grin, laying on more sarcasm than human vocal cords were ever meant to convey, "I can only imagine."

Kara grinned despite herself. "No one's ever called me _darling_ before."

"Maybe I'm just kinky like that."

"Shut. Up." And in the interest of shutting her up, Kara kissed her.

As kisses went, it was--well, it was a first kiss. Messy, uncertain, but rapidly growing more heated as Laura stole the initiative. She cupped Kara's cheek with one hand and tangled the other in Kara's messy stub of a ponytail, tilting her head back and seizing control of the kiss.

Kara's knees nearly buckled and she clutched at Laura's waist. Messy, sloppy, and a first kiss it might be, but _frak_ if the President didn't know how to kiss a girl.

"We're so stupid," Kara said, when Laura came up for air.

"We are," she agreed.

"Why the frak did you say we were platonic?"

"It made sense at the time," Laura told her, with an aggrieved huff of air.

"It did not."

"I was trying to talk down a panicked--and way too alluring--viper pilot so she wouldn't fly away and never speak to me again."

Kara blinked. "...Oh."

"Yes. Oh."

"I take it back. _I'm_ an idiot. You're just fine."

"I'm glad you think so."

"I do think so." Kara squeezed Laura's hip and received a teasing glare in return. "Also I brought you an Arrow. Happy Colonial Day."

"Colonial Day was three weeks ago."

Kara shrugged. "So I'm bad at gifts. And at calendars."

A muffled sound behind her reminded Kara that they had an audience, and she turned to glare at Lee. "What are _you_ laughing at?"

"Nothing," he said smugly. "Nothing at all."

"Frak you."

"Hmm," Laura mused softly, into the space between their bodies, and Kara forgot about Lee all over again when she met her eyes. "I'd say you're damn good at gifts. This is just what I wanted."

"I might be in trouble next time I have to get you something. 'Religious iconography from a nuked planet' sets the bar a little high for your birthday."

Laura smiled, slow and seductive. "I wasn't talking about the Arrow."

If not the Arrow, then-- _Oh._ Kara didn't hold back her answering grin. "No?"

"No. Not even a little."

**Author's Note:**

> A note on canon events not witnessed by Kara: Laura's injury takes place when Cylon Centurions board Galactica in Valley of Darkness (2.02) (Kara is sitting in her apartment on Caprica at the time, navel-gazing with Helo). Laura is thrown to the deck in a firefight, Lee is very heroic, mostly everyone emerges unscathed.
> 
> And on the alteration to canon: At the end of this fic, I've chosen not to care that Sharon-who-is-not-yet-Athena is about to come around a corner behind Kara and have Lee's gun shoved in her face. This moment where Kara strides off the heavy raider alone was already a ridiculous contrivance in canon (drawn out so that Lee would have time to kiss Kara, whoop) so I figured I'd stretch it just a tad more.


End file.
